Because of the significant advantages afforded by mitre boxes and the increasing do-it-yourself market, there has been a continuing desire to provide a relatively low cost and durable mitre box for use by the home craftsman. Conventional wood mitre boxes of generally U-shaped cross section provided with angular slots in the upstanding walls have been made and sold and have been fabricated by some home craftsmen. These wood mitre boxes are generally satisfactory for most applications but tend to be heavy and cumbersome when there is a necessity for transporting from one place to another or for mounting, dismounting and storage. Moreover, such mitre boxes do not afford good control over the workpiece which is received in the space between the upstanding sidewalls.
There have been a number of efforts to fabricate relatively simple mitre boxes from synthetic plastic as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,782,235 granted on Jan. 1, 1974 to Michael P. Curcio. Others have attempted to use synthetic resins to fabricate elements of mitre boxes as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 2,748,811 granted on June 5, 1956 to Joseph S. Chilton. Exemplary of efforts to make wooden mitre boxes of relatively simple construction are Larson U.S. Pat. No. 731,919 granted on June 23, 1903 and Long U.S. Pat. No. 3,397,722 granted Aug. 20, 1968. Use of a post construction to guide the saw blade has been suggested in Currier U.S. Pat. No. 446,431.
Until the present time, there has yet to be developed a simple and relatively lightweight and inexpensive mitre box with good dimensional stability and guide accuracy for the saw blade. Efforts to employ synthetic resins for the manufacture of such mitre boxes have failed to fully account for the advantages and disadvantages of such materials.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel mitre box integrally molded from synthetic resin and providing a relatively long-lived and lightweight structure.
It is also an object to provide such a mitre box which may be fabricated relatively inexpensively and which affords good control over the workpiece disposed therein.
A further object is to provide such a mitre box which is relatively rugged, dimensionally stable and resistant to normal abrasion occurring during use.